In high medieval Europe, conflict took a number of different forms, from large-scale battles, such as disputes over crowns, power and lands, to more local disputes over inheritance and property. In the absence of well-developed administrative structures which could limit conflict, cultural conventions, rituals and behavioural norms evolved to moderate violence within the elite community.

By all measures, Germany played an overwhelming role in the development of philology and linguistics during the 19th century. This ascendancy rests on the transmission to other national academies of theoretical constructs and views, methods and institutional practices. On the other hand, German philological and linguistic ideas, methods and institutions were not constituted in isolation from the rest of the world : Transfers to the German-speaking world must also be taken into account.

The Department of Historical and Geographic Sciences and the Ancient World of the University of Padua (Italy) is offering 4 postdoctoral positions within the frame of the ERC-project "The Dark Side of the Belle Époque".

On the occasion of the launch of Picturing, the first volume of the Terra Foundation Essays, a new publication series exploring themes of critical importance to the history of arts and visual culture of the United States, the Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte, Paris, and the Terra Foundation for American Art are jointly organizing a conference to further the transatlantic dialogue about what pictures are and what they do. This conference invites speakers to reflect on the differences and convergences between the intellectual traditions of visual studies and Bildwissenschaft. Are there ways to think about pictures anew by bringing these models more closely together? Does the move away from visuality towards the material offer possibilities for overcoming early differences between these two approaches?

As a part of the “French-German doctorate program of comparative public law” and “HeiParisMax”, the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne organizes a colloquium about digital surveillance and cyber spying in a french-german perspective. The colloquium takes place on September 23th, 2016 in Paris and intends to gather junior researchers in particular in the field of legal sciences who deal with digital surveillance and cyber spying.

The Allied occupation of Western Germany after the Second World War has long constituted a classic component in academic histories of post-war Germany. After having been the subject of sustained scholarly attention in the 1970s and 1980s, the subject has subsequently faced a decline in academic interest. This two-day conference is intended to showcase new research and provide a forum for the presentation of innovative approaches to the history of the three western zones of occupation. It also aims to stimulate dialogue between historians of the different zones of occupation and so bring together hitherto almost entirely segregated historiographies. We are inviting papers from both emerging scholars and established specialists.

The Study Foundation of the Berlin House of Representatives offers grants for graduate students and young resesearchers from the USA, Great Britain, France, and the successor states of the Soviet Union who want to work on Berlin/Germany or to use research facilities in Berlin for all other topics.

Between 1920 and 1930, a group of young, brilliant Jewish researchers studied in Germany under the direction of Cassirer, Husserl and Heidegger. Leo Strauss, Karl Löwith, Hans Jonas, Hannah Arendt, Jacob Klein, Eric Weil, Günther Anders, and others were forced by the advent of Nazism to escape from Germany and to wander around the world. All these thinkers strove to question the historicist assumption, according to which Modernity is to be seen as progress in respect to the Ancient thought. In their studies, they found new ways to listen to the voice of the Ancients, by revaluating them in the context of the crisis of modern thought. Starting from Athens and Jerusalem, the symbolic roots of western culture, these philosophers problematized and revitalized the quarrel between Ancients and Moderns over again.

The Study Foundation of the House of Representatives is a grant programme for young researchers from the United States, Great Britain, France, and the successor states of the Soviet Union, who want either to work on Berlin along with German as well as German-International issues or to use research facilities in Berlin.

The Council for European Studies (CES) calls for proposals for its 22nd International Conference of Europeanists is organized around the theme "Contradictions: Envisioning European Futures". The CES invites proposals for panels, roundtables, book discussions, and individual papers that consider the many potential futures emerging from the European crisis. We encourage proposals in the widest range of disciplines, and, in particular, proposals that combine disciplines, nationalities, and generations.

These three-month visiting professorships focus on the history of American art and visual culture. Visiting professors offer specialized courses, seminars, and lectures and participate in the larger academic community throughout their stay. Two professorships are available for each academic year.

If today, freedom can be conceived as a physiological property of human being, such conception trivializes the history of freedom as a philosophical concept. Throughout the history of philosophy, freedom has always been discussed in much larger contexts: If, for example, freedom consists in acting freely in causally determined nature, a conception of human freedom arises only from metaphysical presupposition. The same holds true for an understanding of human freedom as something realizing itself in history, as something that is only possible through grace, or as something that must be won against dominant interpretations of self and world. The concept of freedom is thus not only a topic in practical and theoretical philosophy, but can be understood as a connection of both–and be it in a tension between the two. We are calling for contributions both in the history of philosophy and in a systematic approach to the topic.